02/14/16

***OUR FIRST ADVENTURE OUTSIDE OF PRAGUE***

Taylor and I woke up early on Sunday morning to meet up with some people from our program to go to a town outside of Prague, but we could not find them at the train station, so they ended up going without us, and we came back to the dorms. The boys who live next door to us are so much fun, so when we got back home, we decided to go on an adventure with them! Margaret NEEDED a cheeseburger that day, so we managed to fit that in before we left for our last-minute plans to leave the city. Luckily, our friend Grant is extremely good at finding the directions to places and getting us there, so we hopped on a tram, the metro, and a bus, and we were on our way out to the countryside of the Czech Republic!

~Side note: We got yelled at in Czech for standing too close to the metro tracks, and it was interesting because apparently they yell random things in Czech at people who do that, because they know we are not from there. It was really aggressive but made us all jump. We would be the group that got yelled at on the first stop to our destination! I appreciated the heads up, though, because the trams really do not stop for anyone/anything. ~

We were on dirt roads by the end of the bus ride and managed to make it to our destination in about 2 hours from when we decided to leave for the mini-trip. When we got off the bus, which was located literally in the middle of nowhere, we had to wander around to find our destination. When we got off the bus and started walking, it instantly reminded me of Iowa and its farms. It was very green and hilly for miles. We were walking through paths in between farm fields and honestly had no idea where we were going! The partly flooded, abandoned limestone quarry was definitely a spot people knew about, so we managed to find it pretty easily after a little bit of wandering around. It was so beautiful and exactly what I needed to see. It felt more like home to be out adventuring, rather than being in the city!

We spent a couple of hours looking around the limestone quarry and honestly had so much fun! It was really muddy and slippery, but we managed to only get a little dirty. We came upon an old seat belt that was being used as a rope to belay yourself down to a VERY old wooden ladder (this entire system looked old and sketchy), so we decided to use it to get down to the water. Using the seat belt and ladder were the only ways to get down inside the quarry, and we felt the need to go check it out, so we did. It took a lot of convincing to get everyone to go down the whole thing, but luckily Grant wanted to do it so badly that we all watched him go first and then one by one decided it was a good idea for us to go too!

Once we decided it was time to go and catch a bus back to Prague, it was around 5 pm. We thought we were at the right bus stop, but it turns out that we needed to go into the village nearby, which is called Morina. We hiked between farm fields and through a train track and walked into the village as it was getting dark. We had to wait at a bus stop for a good 25 minutes and were getting very cold! We managed to get on a bus going back into the city and got some food in Prague before going back to the dorms.

Exploring last minute and with the group we had was one of my favorite things we have done so far! It was just so relaxing and quiet. The boys we went with are also some of our good friends here, and they are all wonderful! Their names are: Grant, Dale, Matt, and Brandon. All seven of us (Margaret, Taylor, the boys, and I) have such a good time together and get along really well! They are our neighbors in the dorms, which is really convenient when we all want to go and do something last-minute!

Overall, I am having so much fun exploring and getting to know the Czech Republic!